On October 10 2011 14:43 Heosat wrote: Also I love how in the USA people that protested the republicans are branded, left wing, communists, anarchists, socialist eg, how about calling them what they are people who are angry at their government/ past government.
And unfortunately the labeling swings just as much the other way. Just look at all the things the tea party folks have been called. It's not just protesters against the Republicans, but rather anyone opposed to the status quo.
On October 10 2011 15:08 Heosat wrote: I guess I need to modify it a bit then.
Primary
Increase taxes on the wealthy and eliminate the tax loopholes for them and corporations. (Buffett tax and committee to find and close loopholes) Regulate the finance industry and bring those who broke laws in the GFC to account. (Re-implement Glass-Steagall Act) Eliminiate political contributions for politicians and parties, improve the legislation process. (Reversal of Citizens United, banning of riders, cooling off period for politicians legislating on an industry and being able to work in that industry)
Secondary
Reduce the military budget and close military bases abroad. Reduce the dependency on foreign oil. Boost social programs and investment in scientific research.
Eliminating loopholes - Which ones ? And you don't need a committee to "find loopholes". It's not like they weren't intentionally written into the code by the very politicians we have in office.
Taxing corporations - cool idea. Encourages corporations to do their business in lower taxed countries, as in NOT the U.S.
Regulate the finance industry - It's been regulated, except the elected officials who were responsible for overseeing it are corrupt and not doing their jobs, and taking money from the very people they are supposed to regulated.
Eliminate political contributions - now this is one I can get behind. Have to deal with Free Speech issues, but nothing stopping us from putting a 100% tax on money spent on political activities.
Military budget - should be determined based on security needs, not financial.
Reduce foreign oil dependency - everybody claims to want this. But making it illegal to drill in the U.S. makes it pretty difficult. So, is opening up domestic drilling part of the suggestion ?
Boost social programs - Let State governments worry about this. The federal government is not supposed to manage everything.
Investment in scientific research - awesome. I want $100 million to research the mating habits of imported Koala bears and their impact on the local water supply. Can I has too ?
Loopholes - Not all loopholes are intentional and that's the primary difficulty. Many are unintended consequences of fixing a problem elsewhere.
Taxes - I never said we needed to raise the taxes on corporations. I believe the corporate tax rate is right, however loopholes need to be closed and taxes on the wealthy need to be increased.
Finance Industry - I disagree. The Australian finance industry, which is one of the healthiest in the world, is heavily regulated. Laws need to be enacted again, like the Glass-Steagall act, and it needs to be watched like a hawk.
Military Budget - Currently it isn't determined by anything, but I'll agree with you on security.
Oil - There's no need to source oil from the US. Instead, investments should be made to reduce overall oil usage, both by subsidies on oil efficient cars and replacing oil fired power plants. I don't want to eliminate it, as we need plastic, but a reduction is great.
Social programs - Ok, I will amend that point to encompass social security and universal healthcare.
On October 10 2011 15:08 Heosat wrote: I guess I need to modify it a bit then.
Primary
Increase taxes on the wealthy and eliminate the tax loopholes for them and corporations. (Buffett tax and committee to find and close loopholes) Regulate the finance industry and bring those who broke laws in the GFC to account. (Re-implement Glass-Steagall Act) Eliminiate political contributions for politicians and parties, improve the legislation process. (Reversal of Citizens United, banning of riders, cooling off period for politicians legislating on an industry and being able to work in that industry)
Secondary
Reduce the military budget and close military bases abroad. Reduce the dependency on foreign oil. Boost social programs and investment in scientific research.
Eliminating loopholes - Which ones ? And you don't need a committee to "find loopholes". It's not like they weren't intentionally written into the code by the very politicians we have in office.
Taxing corporations - cool idea. Encourages corporations to do their business in lower taxed countries, as in NOT the U.S.
Regulate the finance industry - It's been regulated, except the elected officials who were responsible for overseeing it are corrupt and not doing their jobs, and taking money from the very people they are supposed to regulated.
Eliminate political contributions - now this is one I can get behind. Have to deal with Free Speech issues, but nothing stopping us from putting a 100% tax on money spent on political activities.
Military budget - should be determined based on security needs, not financial.
Reduce foreign oil dependency - everybody claims to want this. But making it illegal to drill in the U.S. makes it pretty difficult. So, is opening up domestic drilling part of the suggestion ?
Boost social programs - Let State governments worry about this. The federal government is not supposed to manage everything.
Investment in scientific research - awesome. I want $100 million to research the mating habits of imported Koala bears and their impact on the local water supply. Can I has too ?
Pretty sure the main motif for the wallstreet occupation is that the government gave a bunch of tax payer money to the banks so that the banks could continue to function in their capacity of supporting the money flow... instead the banks got all paranoid and sat on the money and won't give it back to the tax payers...
Now the tax payers are all suffering and the banks looking the other way because they don't know any better than to bite the hand that saves their ass! The people want return on their "investment" because thats what this really is...
Forget calling it a bailout or a handout or whatever, the Tax payers of America LOANED A FUCK TON OF MONEY TO THE BANKS... and now instead of paying up, they won't give loans to anyone...
I'm trying to get a student loan with my parent's cosigning in debt and this will likely determine whether i can continue to go to college (of course it's not like i could get a job outside of college anyway :[ ) so you can be sure that I am very unhappy with the banks just sitting on the money and hissing at people with their ignorance and their champagne!
A group of people are continuing to protest outside the Central Bank plaza in Dublin city centre.
The protests are under the banner of 'Occupy Dame Street', which saw demonstrators set up camp outside the building on Saturday afternoon.
The group has said its mission is to end corporate corruption and keep the IMF and ECB out of Irish affairs.
The group is also demanding the return to the Irish people of oil and gas reserves off the Irish coast. It is acting in solidarity with movements including 'Occupy Wall Street' in the US and similarly aims to be a non-violent, leaderless resistance movement with no political affiliations.
Sigh. I'm on the left, but I thought his attack on corporations was fairly weak. Corporations are good in that they allow coordination between work groups to flow in a more organized manner. The internet is a good example. Distributed systems are secure, but they don't communicate well as every router communicates with every other router and they can get pretty bloated. Tree like systems organize well, but can be attacked at the head. Airplanes and telephones companies are able to organize traffic a lot better as subsystems have one parent to communicate to and the parent system is responsible for communicating with the parent above it. Small city airports fly to the nation's larger airplane hubs. Pearson, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver are responsible for coordinating international flights. Saskatoon, Regina, and Hamilton airports are not.
Bringing it to the corporation, having a chain of managers allows communication to be distributed quickly so that the organization moves as a unit. The military works well because of it's hierarchical structure and government has grown inefficient in recent years because of the permanent outsourcing that happens.
I just don't see how my Android phone would have been made by something other than a corporation. I don't see every independent tradesman owning their own manufacturing equipment. Pooling of resources and running the resources at full capacity doesn't happen outside a corporate structure.
In short, the guy is a hippy and he deserved to be insulted.
How you get that response out of what he said is quite the leap, everyone knows corporations are a way unify work force into a cohesive unit, as well as to mobilize product on an efficient level. This is not the argument what so ever, the problem we have here in America is that huge "BANKING" Firms used the money they received from the loans they KNEW the people could not afford, and in turn bet against the public to gain profit. This is not how anyone should conduct business, let alone the BIGGEST banking firms within our country, only to be bailed out with OUR money, for the CRIMES they committed. The greed and uncontrolled raping of our resources/economy is sicking. If you are to stoop so low as to call that man a hippy for the lucid outlook he has on the situation, then I believe I can stoop low as well and call you a BLIND IGNORANT TOOL BAG, keep being a sheep. moron.
Edit: Oh and by the way this is just ONE incident in a myriad of mass corruption. If we do not protest this current standard business practice, science help us all.
The constant polarizing of this situation is abhorrent. You must be a liberal, you must be a communist. Fuck that, using the political guise of left or right, communist or capitalist up or down black or white, is a total cop out used by morons to degenerate the topic into the same old bullshit. Why do you think abortion is always a topic in presidential elections, its because politics has the population so polarized, its an easy way to consistently get votes. As easy as it is to call anyone agreeing with this movement, a liberal or hippy.
User was temp banned for this post.
A+ post even though he got temp banned for it. Especially the last paragraph. Couldn't have said it better.
The constant polarizing of this situation is abhorrent. You must be a liberal, you must be a communist. Fuck that, using the political guise of left or right, communist or capitalist up or down black or white, is a total cop out used by morons to degenerate the topic into the same old bullshit.
This alone was worth the temp ban.
The media does this too instead of reporting properly.
The constant polarizing of this situation is abhorrent. You must be a liberal, you must be a communist. Fuck that, using the political guise of left or right, communist or capitalist up or down black or white, is a total cop out used by morons to degenerate the topic into the same old bullshit.
This alone was worth the temp ban.
The media does this too instead of reporting properly.
Are you insinuating that the media reporting like that is okay? Because you just said it's okay to get banned by saying polarizing issues using buzz words is a complete crock of crap and a way to sidestep the issues. Nothing in that paragraph is even remotely offensive (some of the other parts of the post however...)
Really reinforces this. The way he responds and insults Chris Hedges is appalling and should not, under any circumstances, AT ALL, be tolerated. Rather than discuss the issue it's more disingenuous to resort to ad hominems in order to sway public opinion. This is exactly what is happening in every media outlet, both 'left' and 'right' outlets showing their (disgusting) bias.
We would get so much more accomplished by just looking at the logical forms of arguments rather than who says them. It is quite enraging and makes me incredibly angry that this sort of journalism is what is dished out the people.
I wouldn't have much of a problem supporting something like this just from what i've read from the OP. But i have 2 problems, #1 is this started in Washington, the people you want to protest are there, not on wall street. The guys on wall street simply used the tools the government gave them because the congress thought it would help people, and weren't thinking properly. Which is directly the people's bidding because someone always wants the gvt. to do something. As long as it SOUNDS good, people will like it. But as usual, the law of unintended consequences haunts legislation because no one wants to take the truth like men and realize that the gvt. can't truly help the economy. EVER. Some of the major contributions to these bubbles started as far back as the late 80s.
Problem #2, the unions are getting involved. I'll listen to a cause at the very least, until unions start getting involved, you know whatever they're trying to accomplish at first, it is about to get twisted and used in the most disgusting despicable manner ever. If it wasn't that to begin with.
More or less of a 3rd problem is that something like this won't target the bad guys, it will blanket cover everyone, just like everything else ends up doing. There will be more friendly fire than anything, which hurts the econ as a whole. Not something we particularly want right now.
Also, in REAL free markets, nothing is regulated either. The market self corrects itself, it doesn't need regulation to function fairly or properly. In case you don't know economic history, in the USA the economy was let be, except for some tampering with money (silver being a valid currency, stuff like that) until something like 1929, we've had bubbles, crashes, and issues with the econ ever since.
(Free market aka capitalism, i prefer not to call it that because pretty much every 'ism' is bad, and capitalism was made up by socialist or communists one, idr, to label the people who were in favor of free market.)
On October 10 2011 15:08 Heosat wrote: I guess I need to modify it a bit then.
Primary
Increase taxes on the wealthy and eliminate the tax loopholes for them and corporations. (Buffett tax and committee to find and close loopholes) Regulate the finance industry and bring those who broke laws in the GFC to account. (Re-implement Glass-Steagall Act) Eliminiate political contributions for politicians and parties, improve the legislation process. (Reversal of Citizens United, banning of riders, cooling off period for politicians legislating on an industry and being able to work in that industry)
Secondary
Reduce the military budget and close military bases abroad. Reduce the dependency on foreign oil. Boost social programs and investment in scientific research.
Eliminating loopholes - Which ones ? And you don't need a committee to "find loopholes". It's not like they weren't intentionally written into the code by the very politicians we have in office.
Taxing corporations - cool idea. Encourages corporations to do their business in lower taxed countries, as in NOT the U.S.
Regulate the finance industry - It's been regulated, except the elected officials who were responsible for overseeing it are corrupt and not doing their jobs, and taking money from the very people they are supposed to regulated.
Eliminate political contributions - now this is one I can get behind. Have to deal with Free Speech issues, but nothing stopping us from putting a 100% tax on money spent on political activities.
Military budget - should be determined based on security needs, not financial.
Reduce foreign oil dependency - everybody claims to want this. But making it illegal to drill in the U.S. makes it pretty difficult. So, is opening up domestic drilling part of the suggestion ?
Boost social programs - Let State governments worry about this. The federal government is not supposed to manage everything.
Investment in scientific research - awesome. I want $100 million to research the mating habits of imported Koala bears and their impact on the local water supply. Can I has too ?
Loopholes - Not all loopholes are intentional and that's the primary difficulty. Many are unintended consequences of fixing a problem elsewhere.
Taxes - I never said we needed to raise the taxes on corporations. I believe the corporate tax rate is right, however loopholes need to be closed and taxes on the wealthy need to be increased.
Finance Industry - I disagree. The Australian finance industry, which is one of the healthiest in the world, is heavily regulated. Laws need to be enacted again, like the Glass-Steagall act, and it needs to be watched like a hawk.
Military Budget - Currently it isn't determined by anything, but I'll agree with you on security.
Oil - There's no need to source oil from the US. Instead, investments should be made to reduce overall oil usage, both by subsidies on oil efficient cars and replacing oil fired power plants. I don't want to eliminate it, as we need plastic, but a reduction is great.
Social programs - Ok, I will amend that point to encompass social security and universal healthcare.
No the financial industry doesn't need to be regulated. The question you need to ask is why is the bank gambling in the first place? The answer is because it is of no risk to them. Why? Because the federal gvt. backs these banks. There is no incentive to be careful with who i loan money to if the federal bank will buy my bad debt. just because Australia is doing good right now relative to everyone else doesn't mean they are doing it the best. What needs to understood, is that we were doing it right, and we have slowly done things wrong for about 80 or so years now.
Also, about the military budget, know why it is so big? Because the USA is the back bone, standing army, for everyone we've had to fight for the past 100 years, and many other small countries that decided to hop onto the sweet lil deal of the US defending them for free. The reason we do this is because these smaller countries could never defend themselves, and the larger countries (ie germany, japan) are trouble countries. If they have no military, they cant start anything...again. None of these countries econs are good, or stable, or not depending on the US to buy what they make to begin with. Just imagine if they had to fund their own military. Germany is especially in trouble because of their debt (which is actually more than the US, hard to believe i know) because the gvt. is really big on green energy. Green energy right now being a big fluke, an expensive fluke, that is harmful to the environment one way or another anyway. More so than what we were doing.
I know it probably seems like i'm derailing the thread or something, but all this stuff is tied together, and whats been discussed in the entirety of this thread is such a small amount of what goes into understanding the economy. Which to truly understand what is going on right now alone means you need to study the past 100 years of history, with an economist's mindset. Something i'm darn well sure people haven't done.
On October 10 2011 17:35 Stirbend wrote: I wouldn't have much of a problem supporting something like this just from what i've read from the OP. But i have 2 problems, #1 is this started in Washington, the people you want to protest are there, not on wall street. The guys on wall street simply used the tools the government gave them because the congress thought it would help people, and weren't thinking properly. Which is directly the people's bidding because someone always wants the gvt. to do something. As long as it SOUNDS good, people will like it. But as usual, the law of unintended consequences haunts legislation because no one wants to take the truth like men and realize that the gvt. can't truly help the economy. EVER. Some of the major contributions to these bubbles started as far back as the late 80s.
Problem #2, the unions are getting involved. I'll listen to a cause at the very least, until unions start getting involved, you know whatever they're trying to accomplish at first, it is about to get twisted and used in the most disgusting despicable manner ever. If it wasn't that to begin with.
More or less of a 3rd problem is that something like this won't target the bad guys, it will blanket cover everyone, just like everything else ends up doing. There will be more friendly fire than anything, which hurts the econ as a whole. Not something we particularly want right now.
Also, in REAL free markets, nothing is regulated either. The market self corrects itself, it doesn't need regulation to function fairly or properly. In case you don't know economic history, in the USA the economy was let be, except for some tampering with money (silver being a valid currency, stuff like that) until something like 1929, we've had bubbles, crashes, and issues with the econ ever since.
(Free market aka capitalism, i prefer not to call it that because pretty much every 'ism' is bad, and capitalism was made up by socialist or communists one, idr, to label the people who were in favor of free market.)
On October 10 2011 15:08 Heosat wrote: I guess I need to modify it a bit then.
Primary
Increase taxes on the wealthy and eliminate the tax loopholes for them and corporations. (Buffett tax and committee to find and close loopholes) Regulate the finance industry and bring those who broke laws in the GFC to account. (Re-implement Glass-Steagall Act) Eliminiate political contributions for politicians and parties, improve the legislation process. (Reversal of Citizens United, banning of riders, cooling off period for politicians legislating on an industry and being able to work in that industry)
Secondary
Reduce the military budget and close military bases abroad. Reduce the dependency on foreign oil. Boost social programs and investment in scientific research.
Eliminating loopholes - Which ones ? And you don't need a committee to "find loopholes". It's not like they weren't intentionally written into the code by the very politicians we have in office.
Taxing corporations - cool idea. Encourages corporations to do their business in lower taxed countries, as in NOT the U.S.
Regulate the finance industry - It's been regulated, except the elected officials who were responsible for overseeing it are corrupt and not doing their jobs, and taking money from the very people they are supposed to regulated.
Eliminate political contributions - now this is one I can get behind. Have to deal with Free Speech issues, but nothing stopping us from putting a 100% tax on money spent on political activities.
Military budget - should be determined based on security needs, not financial.
Reduce foreign oil dependency - everybody claims to want this. But making it illegal to drill in the U.S. makes it pretty difficult. So, is opening up domestic drilling part of the suggestion ?
Boost social programs - Let State governments worry about this. The federal government is not supposed to manage everything.
Investment in scientific research - awesome. I want $100 million to research the mating habits of imported Koala bears and their impact on the local water supply. Can I has too ?
Pretty sure the main motif for the wallstreet occupation is that the government gave a bunch of tax payer money to the banks so that the banks could continue to function in their capacity of supporting the money flow... instead the banks got all paranoid and sat on the money and won't give it back to the tax payers...
Now the tax payers are all suffering and the banks looking the other way because they don't know any better than to bite the hand that saves their ass! The people want return on their "investment" because thats what this really is...
Forget calling it a bailout or a handout or whatever, the Tax payers of America LOANED A FUCK TON OF MONEY TO THE BANKS... and now instead of paying up, they won't give loans to anyone...
I'm trying to get a student loan with my parent's cosigning in debt and this will likely determine whether i can continue to go to college (of course it's not like i could get a job outside of college anyway :[ ) so you can be sure that I am very unhappy with the banks just sitting on the money and hissing at people with their ignorance and their champagne! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PiXDTK_CBY
Mind if I ask what your course of study and cost of tuition are ?
On October 10 2011 18:05 Stirbend wrote: Germany is especially in trouble because of their debt (which is actually more than the US, hard to believe i know) because the gvt. is really big on green energy. Green energy right now being a big fluke, an expensive fluke, that is harmful to the environment one way or another anyway. More so than what we were doing.
Really?
Germany: national debt: ~2.048.000.000.000 €, debt per capita: ~24.900€ ( ~ 35500$ ) USA: national debt: ~14.818.000.000.000 $, debt per capita: ~47.500$
On October 10 2011 18:05 Stirbend wrote: Germany is especially in trouble because of their debt (which is actually more than the US, hard to believe i know) because the gvt. is really big on green energy. Green energy right now being a big fluke, an expensive fluke, that is harmful to the environment one way or another anyway. More so than what we were doing.
You're partly right about green energy being a money-losing business overall atm, that has to be supported by govt. money. But your assessment that green energy is the reason for our debt has be the worst economical analysis I have read in years. Do you know how costly even the conservative party that loves the atom-energy calculated the costs of the nuclear phase out till 2015 for the government? 16 billion euro. That's what? Wow, and increase in our debt of about 0,7 percent. Those evil green energys are really pulling us down! The EEG costs rougly 5 billion € a year, which is about 1% percent of our national income. Sounds like much, eh? Guess what, atom-energy alone was subzidized with 204 billion € during the last 50 years, which makes 4 billion a year as well, without being anywhere close to have solutions or money for the disposal of nuclear waste included in those 204 billion.
Stop talking all smart on people for not being informed and missing the big picture when every information - or rather propaganda - you give is factually wrong.
Meet the Texan investor who made millions from the credit crunch... and now he stands to make 65,000% profit if Europe goes down the drain Kyle Bass founded hedge fund after saving $10million from Wall Street stint Gambled against sub-prime mortgage bond market before it crashed
He has now started to bet against European countries including Greece
Set to increase money by 650 times from Greek bet if default happens Keeps huge gold bars in his desk drawer and owns 20 million nickel coins
On October 10 2011 17:35 Stirbend wrote: I wouldn't have much of a problem supporting something like this just from what i've read from the OP. But i have 2 problems, #1 is this started in Washington, the people you want to protest are there, not on wall street. The guys on wall street simply used the tools the government gave them because the congress thought it would help people, and weren't thinking properly. Which is directly the people's bidding because someone always wants the gvt. to do something. As long as it SOUNDS good, people will like it. But as usual, the law of unintended consequences haunts legislation because no one wants to take the truth like men and realize that the gvt. can't truly help the economy. EVER. Some of the major contributions to these bubbles started as far back as the late 80s.
Problem #2, the unions are getting involved. I'll listen to a cause at the very least, until unions start getting involved, you know whatever they're trying to accomplish at first, it is about to get twisted and used in the most disgusting despicable manner ever. If it wasn't that to begin with.
More or less of a 3rd problem is that something like this won't target the bad guys, it will blanket cover everyone, just like everything else ends up doing. There will be more friendly fire than anything, which hurts the econ as a whole. Not something we particularly want right now.
Also, in REAL free markets, nothing is regulated either. The market self corrects itself, it doesn't need regulation to function fairly or properly. In case you don't know economic history, in the USA the economy was let be, except for some tampering with money (silver being a valid currency, stuff like that) until something like 1929, we've had bubbles, crashes, and issues with the econ ever since.
(Free market aka capitalism, i prefer not to call it that because pretty much every 'ism' is bad, and capitalism was made up by socialist or communists one, idr, to label the people who were in favor of free market.)
I've heard there are occupy federal reserve gatherings going on as well. Or should I call it private reserve? I don't get it, how can a private bank be infused with the government and that such a bank controls the issuance of currency.
EPT![[image loading]](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Zzy0at_cv30/TpH3PtnqoJI/AAAAAAAAGwk/N6yTKZKGeME/s640/anon%252520occupy%252520flyer.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/I61l0.jpg)
